Project Gorgon aims for Steam early access ‘soon’

Starved for news concerning indie MMO Project Gorgon? Then prepare to gorge yourself silly on a new developer diary that stuffs so much info into your brain that you’ll be dizzy for a good hour after.

First things first: Project Gorgon states that it is currently in late alpha testing and will be heading to Steam early access “soon.” The plan is to allow persistent characters from now through launch, although items and money will be wiped at some point to prevent an imbalance to the economy. Speaking of launch, the head developer emphasized that Project Gorgon will be marketed as a buy-to-play title with a small, optional subscription. There are plans to roll out content updates on a bi-monthly basis with bigger expansions coming after that.

Project Gorgon is going through several large scale changes right now, some of which are tied to the game’s jump to better versions of Unity and won’t be seen until it transitions into beta testing. “One of the other important pieces of development that won’t happen until beta is optimization,” the post says. “During beta, the game will be made to run better — and look better.”

The massive developer update covers plenty of other topics, including why Project Gorgon won’t really have PvP and the inevitability of nerfs. Future features were revealed in the post as well, such as housing, mounts, combat specialties, bards, and “Weather Witches.”

The post also discussed how upcoming races will be accessed: “The additional races are orcs, fairies, and dwarves. Unlike the existing playable races, these races are intended for more experienced players, not complete newbies. They will need to be unlocked via quests — although the quests are around level 30, so you only need to learn the basics of the game to unlock these races.”